LED bulbs damage the eyes?

They always were, but in the early days, no one was going to pay £1-2K more for an accessory which no one else could 'see', so there was no demand for the colour matched ones, only for ones which 'stood out'.

The irony was they are poor for driving - mainly they were to get you noticed, same as the blue and even green headlamp bulbs you can find.

You get that when focusing is being performed by a lense rather than just a reflector - chromatic aberration.

I think it's simply less visible in brighter background light, where you are not going to see the stroboscopic images against a well lit background.

I also notice it on the pedestrian crossing indicators - the little red man on the push button unit. In this case, the pulse width modulation is being used to dim it at night (so as not to dazzle), so it doesn't happen during the daytime anyway.

I'm not aware of any car maker giving you the choice.

I can see the flicker as well, hate it. Though it's getting less common, I guess they have either upped the frequency or LEDs can now produce the required amount of light without overheating when fed DC.

What really distracts me is those blasted LED based cats eyes that brightly flicker in your perifial vision as you drive past 'em.

And I don't like the bright "day light running" LED strings that seem to adorn cars these days. Too bright. And what's with all the silly stringy patterns they draw for brake/rear lights?

What I don't like about HIDs is bumpy/hummocky roads and the "self leveling" not keeping up, so an HID equiped vehicle is constantly flashing it's lights at you. Really bad when on coming bloody annoying when they are 1/4 mile or more behind you. Mercs seem to suffer from this.

Not sure which of those two effects I was seeing tonight, first though it was solar cats' eyes (M6 somewhere between Stafford and Knutsford) then thought they weren't as bright as when I'd seen them before, and wondered if it might be a reflection of my own DRLs flickering back at me (but I haven't noticed my model of car being flickery when I see one coming the other way).

The basic trouble with saving energy is. You dont. From the moment you buy an energy saving bulb it begins to die,they have a short full powered light compared to a real bulb. They are without a doubt not good for your eyes,too expensive. The eu would have us all believe that we are saving energy......

Can you remember the torch with the real bulb that just kept working forever. Now with these stupid led torches you have to charge them forever just to last 30 minutes of full power.and yes i spend less than anyone on electric

MOre than twice as long, in fact.

Can I suggest you take your sunglasses off when indoors?

I turn on a light for light, not heat. Especially in the summer. Oddly enough, we've not lit our woodburner since May for much the same reasons.

When I switch on a light I want light not heat.

No, bulbs used to burn out fairly regularly.

Charge? LED torches I have are a) far brighter than any incandescant torch b) just work.

It makes a tiny difference to the heating budget. Most heat that incandescent lights produce ends up as dark marks on the ceiling and so is useless to the householder.

And usually at very inconvenient times - Murphy's law. LED torches are so efficient that you can bridge the switch with a 1M resistor so that the LED always glows and you can find it in an unexpected power cut.

The super dayglo conventional torches are impressive too. Unfortunately they didn't take off and so only the keyrings remain.

The full glotorch plastic case would glow passively for an entire night after being in sunlight for most of an afternoon. There is a newer model in several colours but nowhere near as good.

And will run happily for an enormously longer time on the same set of batteries than a similar brightness incandescent lamp based torch.

By "bare" you mean not even in the plastic blob that free-standing LEDs usually have?

The water clear plastic blob lens doesn't much difference. It does make the emitter occupy a slightly larger apparent angle but even so the light intensity of the LED die is potentially damaging to the eye.

I meant without any diffuser or beam spreading optics in the way.

They have to be on a decent heat sink to run at high power.

In message , Dave Liquorice writes

I think it's car designers playing with something newish). It'll get old hat and then they'll just go back to more normallish light styles I'm sure

The hidden agenda is that car and other vehicle lights used to be made by OEM suppliers, and the same light fitting would fit many cars, so the car maker couldn't charge over the odds for them.

Now that they are easier to certify and make in different patterns, the makers design their own, and use copyright law to protect their monopoly. The effect is that replacement lights are now more expensive, and once the makers drop a pattern, then as soon as one breaks (Say in a minor car park bump) and can't be repaired or replaced by a used unit, the car is, effectively, scrap.